Episode #251 – Put Yourself on the Other Side of the Counter… You’ll Be Surprised At Which Side!

Today’s inspiration is awesome… until you have a crazy customer in front of you! HAHA

Well, it’s still an awesome inspiration, but we have to keep it in perspective. Here’s the perspective. The customer is your guest. However, what happens if you throw a party and you have a guest show up that’s decides they want to fight one of your other guests. They start to yell, swear, and actually take a swing.

You wouldn’t tolerate it.

The same is true of a customer. Yes, they are your guest, but when they quit behaving like a guest and become a nuisance, you have permission to get rid of them.

Normally I’m all about the Infinity Customer concept which is to prevent “one and done” and cultivate to keep a customer forever. When you adopt an infinity mindset you are able to develop products for your customers instead of finding customers for your products. This is a tremendous mind-shift.

However…

You are in control of who your customer base is! If you choose to use psycho graphics and target on customer on behavior you will soon find a group of people you enjoy working with… this goes one step beyond demographics to actual likes/dislikes of a person.

Enough about that… let’s get back to angry people.

What I’m saying is this… equate your business to a party. You are throwing a party and you get to invite the guests. When you have a rude party crasher you need to get rid of the crasher so they don’t wreck the party for others… The other people at your party include your employees. No one yells at your employees, ever.

Today, I called into customer support and the girl that answered was so sweet. She helped but here was the scenario. Their entire system crashed. Their website was down for 2 hours… their internal system was also down. Add to the pressure that it was a deadline type business AND that deadline involved money. BOOM. Recipe for angry people that wanted to get the biggest bang for their buck.

I have learned that when a computer system is down. That’s it. It’s down. It’s awful, but for some reason you are not going to be able to do what you want, right now. Get used to it and accept it. So I was talking with this nice customer service rep and she was apologizing for not being able to help… I just said, “it’s not your fault” – you could hear the relief in her voice. She actually said, “you’re so nice, the last 5 people have yelled at me.”

WHY OR WHY DOES ANYONE YELL AT CUSTOMER SERVICE PEOPLE? Sheeh… you’re yelling at the one person that is designed to help you. Why yell at this “lifeline” to help? It has never made sense to me.

I get that something is wrong and you’re not getting your way right now… but chill. I think EVERYONE has worked on the other side of the counter. Remember this when you are the customer. Remember to be patient. Remember to be a GOOD GUEST.

My heart went out to this girl. She woke up, got dressed, went to work, the business had a major issue, customers got hostile, and she was powerless. All she did was get up and go to work. Could we please keep this in perspective and start treating the person on the other side of the counter or phone as a human being. After all, we are their guest!

PS: thanks for reading! I really appreciate you being here. Make sure to “like” this post… and follow me! (and please do me a favor… if you want more great ideas like the one in this post, just fill out this form and I’ll send them to you… start here

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Action Steps
1- Update your customer service procedures… and more important, what to do if you or your employee have a hostile customer on the phone or in person, including what to do if the situation escalates to violence. BTW: don’t ever be afraid to call 911 if you have an “in person” customer that gets hostile. Let the professionals handle it. But put it on your procedure list so you have a plan!
2- Install my free app! (SmallBusinessClubApp.com)

Podcast:
Listen to Episode #251 of the Two Minute Commute audio blog Podcast